The present invention relates generally to floating-point number systems and, more particularly, to a method and system for optimizing floating-point conversion between different bases.
The conversion between different types of floating-point number representations presents a great challenge. Certain conversion algorithms between IBM's Hexadecimal Floating Point (HFP) and the IEEE 754 Binary Floating Point (BFP) have already been implemented. However, the IEEE 754 floating-point standard has been revised to incorporate a Decimal Floating Point (DFP) definition. DFP provides a wide range of flexibility and advantages over BFP and HFP. For example, decimal arithmetic makes numerical calculations more “human-friendly,” providing a robust, reliable framework for financial applications that are often subject to legal requirements concerning rounding and precision of the results in the areas of banking, telephone billing, tax calculation, currency conversion, insurance, or accounting in general.
DFP has been used in calculators for many years, but for the first time it is becoming part of the revised IEEE 754R standard. The DFP formats, as defined by the IEEE 754R standard, include a 32 bit single precision format, a 64 bit double precision format, and a 128 bit extended precision format. This new standard provides the means for computer designers to develop specific operations that are optimized to this new standard. Prior to the standardization of the operands, it was not possible to develop specific operations to accelerate these types of computations. For some commercial workloads, emulation of DFP operations in software can dominate the processing timing.
With the advent of the new standard and the increase in the use of decimal arithmetic operations for financial calculations, it becomes desirable to provide older computing systems with the capability of utilizing the newer DFP format.